James F. Doyle

A Radical Critique of Criminal Punishment James F. Doyle presents a radical philosophical critique of punishment. He draws a contrast between the “ethics of obligation” and the “ethics of social relations” as radically different normative approaches to law and criminal punishment. As Doyle makes clear, the ethics of obligation informs current criminal justice punishment strategies, […]

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Sarah Whetstone & Teresa Gowan

Carceral Rehab as Fuzzy Penality: Hybrid Technologies of Control in the New Temperance Crusade The steep escalation of mandatory drug rehabilitation since 1989 has incorporated “strong-arm” rehab as a central node of carceral control. This article draws on ethnographies of three Midwestern male residential rehab facilities that reflect three dominant treatment paradigms, which result in […]

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Tanya Golash-Boza

Structural Racism, Criminalization, and Pathways to Deportation for Dominican and Jamaican Men in the US Structural racism—in the form of heavy policing, residential segregation, and limited social services and labor opportunities—combined with changes in immigration laws in 1996 and the rise of immigration policing in the early twenty-first century has shaped the incorporation patterns of […]

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Vol. 18-3 Attica: 1971-1991 — A Commemorative Issue

This issue provides a retrospective on the Attica rebellion, an assessment of prisoner struggles in the United States, Canada, England and Wales, and Japan since 1971, and thoughts on a new penology for the 1990s. It is of enduring historical value. TABLE OF CONTENTS Attica: The “Bitter Lessons” Forgotten? Robert P. Weiss, Editor [free pdf […]

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Vol. 44-1: Ethnographic Explorations of Punishment and the Governance of Security

Ethnographic Explorations of Punishment and the Governance of Security edited by Robert Werth This special issue highlights the growth of ethnographic examinations of penal governance across multiple disciplines, emphasizing the possibilities and the potential blind spots of ethnography as a methodology for studying penality. By analyzing phenomena as varied as pre-trial incarceration, parole and reentry, female […]

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Vol. 44-2/3: Neoliberal Confinements: Social Suffering in the Carceral State

Neoliberal Confinements: Social Suffering in the Carceral State edited by Alessandro De Giorgi & Benjamin Fleury-Steiner This special issue aims to provide a cartography of some of the forms of social suffering experienced by marginalized and oppressed populations in the US carceral state. The contributors extend their gaze beyond the prison and its ancillary institutions […]

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Vol. 45-1: Emancipatory Justice: Confronting the Carceral State

Emancipatory Justice: Confronting the Carceral State edited by Michael Hallett This special issue of Social Justice expands previous editions’ explorations of emancipatory justice and incarceration. The issue begins with the premise that addressing structural violence is the greatest single challenge to establishing mechanisms of emancipatory justice. Looking beyond the prison walls, contributors identify areas in which new […]

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Vol. 45-2/3

TABLE OF CONTENTS Histories of Abolition, Critiques of Security Brendan McQuade Rebranding Mass Incarceration: The Lippman Commission and Carceral Devolution in New York City Zhandarka Kurti & Jarrod Shanahan Reproducing Disorder: The Effects of Broken Windows Policing on Homeless People with Mental Illness in San Francisco Tony Sparks You Have the Right to Remain Violent: […]

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Vol. 45-4 – Penal Abolition: Challenging Boundaries

Penal Abolition: Challenging Boundaries edited by Michael J. Coyle & Judah Schept The present issue’s focus reflects abolition’s foundational questioning of the material boundaries of capitalist societies—borders, prisons, property—as well as the matériel of those boundaries—barbed wire, cages, fences, walls, and increasingly their electronic manifestations. Whereas some reform efforts aim to tweak the size and […]

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Vol. 46-2/3 – Policing the Protest Cycle of the 2010s

Please note: This issue has not been published yet. You may purchase a digital copy for immediate download or pre-order a printed copy below (shipping in September 2020). Policing the Protest Cycle of the 2010s edited by Manuel Maroto, Ignacio González-Sánchez, and José A. Brandariz This special issue analyzes the cycle of protests that has swept […]

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Vol. 46-4 – Punishment and History

Punishment and History edited by Ashley T. Rubin This special issue appraises the role of history in the study of punishment, illuminating its utility and limitations for understanding penal change. Rather than seeking the origins of mass incarceration, as others have done, this issue examines how penal history might provide lessons for understanding punishment as a social […]

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Vol. 47-1/2

Abstracts (pdf download) TABLE OF CONTENTS In the Sites of Operation Condor: Memory and Afterlives of Clandestine Detention Centers Michael Welch Rounding Up the Undesirables: The Making of a Prostitution-Targeted Loitering Law in New York City Karen Struening Social Movements in Juvenile Prisons: An Investigation Alexandra L. Cox Exhausting People, Extracting Revenue: Police, Prisons, and Counterinsurgency Matthew […]

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Vol. 47-3/4 — A Critical Theory of Police Power

A Critical Theory of Police Power in the Twenty-First Century edited by Mark Neocleous and the Anti-security Collective This special issue advances a critical theory of police power focusing on the inextricable link between the violence of police, the organization of the state, and the reproduction of capital. Analyzing police power from different perspectives and at different scales, the […]

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